Only Villains Do That

For once, I didn’t waste time shooting off my mouth, not when I had better things to shoot.

Slimeshot!

I was focused right on Lady Gray’s grinning face with my hand still extended from trying to cast Immolate, but the slime did not emerge. In fact, the spell did nothing; there was no sensation of the magic activating at all. Its familiar weight remained there in my mind, but it wouldn’t fire. As if I were trying to use it on an invalid target, like casting Heal on a brick.

I zeroed my focus onto her left eye and switched spells, activating Heat Beam at its narrowest intensity, which should have fried her cornea. It also failed to activate. Complete no sell.

The whole process took no more than a couple of seconds, but they were seconds passing in silence, during which I stood pointing at the woman and clearly accomplishing nothing, all in front of an audience. Lady Gray’s smug little grin widened another fraction.

“All right, that’s a neat trick,” I finally admitted. “You should just stick to that instead of trying to make speeches.”

She had the temerity to wink at me. “Wait’ll you see my next one.”

With her hand already on the handle of the dagger, she only had to flex her arm to yank it from the sheath, activating its invisibility effect.

“Boss! Sparkspray!” Biribo hissed in my ear, and then I was somewhat distracted by a blow to the chest toppling me backward. Even as I was falling, the knife sank into my gut and ripped out sideways, a sadistic and truly lethal wound to anyone who couldn’t cast Heal, which I did before I hit the ground.

I tried to roll the way Goose had taught me, and somehow my recovery put me directly into the path of a vicious kick. Almost as if she had anticipated that move before I even made it and positioned herself accordingly. Invisibility aside, it turned out that my few weeks of practice at hand-to-hand fighting were not going to make me a match for somebody who’d been doing it at the highest levels for longer than I’d been alive.

However, even as the air was driven from my chest, the direction from which the kick came told me where my opponent was, and unlike some sorcerers (apparently), I didn’t need to breathe to cast.

Sparkspray!

I had the satisfaction of hearing Lady Gray yelp in annoyed surprise as the burst of sparks momentarily revealed her invisible shape in their midst, raising one arm to protect her eyes. As an even more useful side effect of showering someone in sparks, a few landed on her clothes and continued to smolder, giving away her position for seconds longer.

And fortunately, I wasn’t in this alone.

A crossbow bolt impacted her midsection. It didn’t penetrate far—yeah, that coat was definitely armored underneath—and she didn’t act injured, just grabbing the thing and ripping it loose with no evidence of blood, but even that just served to reveal where she was. Crossbows twanged and four more bolts ripped at her: two clean misses, another glancing hit off an armor panel in her coat, and the fourth sinking into her arm. She stayed invisible, but weirdly enough, the blood welling along the bolt itself came into view.

“It’s a targeting blocker!” Biribo hissed. “Area of effect spells should still work!”

I’d already put that much together and was rising back to my knees as Lady Gray ripped the bolt out of her arm and retreated. She threw it to the side, and undoubtedly was going to run in a different direction to throw off detection, but luckily my next trick didn’t need to be precisely aimed.

Windburst!

A table was knocked over, chairs tossed to the side, and something invisible sprayed droplets of blood as it was flung bodily across the room, and straight through the front windows with a crash of shattering glass and thin akorshil blinds.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Gannit shouted. “When I said you could make a mess, I didn’t mean bust up the entire place!”

“Thousand pardons,” I wheezed, straightening painfully up, “I’ll try to get murdered more discreetly next time. Heal. Now if you’ll excuse me, that woman is still alive and in not nearly enough pain, two errors I intend to correct.”

“Why didn’t you just set her on fire?” Adelly demanded.

“Because it seems she is immune to magic,” I growled, “at least up to a point. Wide-range spells connected with her but nothing aimed at her would even activate. Biribo, is it another property of that dagger?”

“No, all the dagger has is invisibility,” he reported. “She must have another artifact hidden under all those clothes; I can’t analyze what I can’t see. But I can tell you that based on the strength of her Blessing of Might and how powerful that dagger is and her spell-blocker has to be, she hasn’t got the energy left to wear another artifact. Just the two.”

Oh, was that all.

“You wanna tell me why you got a second squeaky voice inside your hood, there?” Gannit inquired.

“Lady Gray’s probably got several other artifacts lying around,” said Sakin. “She chose this loadout to deal with a powerful sorcerer.”

“It was a good choice,” I had to admit. I was carefully watching the door and windows for any signs of movement, not that anything would stop her from circling invisibly around and coming in through another entrance. “I’m not sure how to fight that, exactly, but I can’t afford to get pinned down or go on the defensive. She’s probably already tearing into the girls elsewhere on the street. Everybody with me; if you get stabbed, try to make a noise. As long as I can see you, I can heal you.”

“Hang on!” Aster caught my arm as I started toward the door. “You wanted that guy’s boots. Are they artifacts? You’ll need every possible advantage out there.”

“Oh. Good point. Okay, everybody circle up while I loot this corpse and change my shoes, and then we’ll go kill the invisible assassin. And on that note, fuck me running, why is this my life?”

It was quick enough to get the boots off the dead guy and onto me, ignoring Gannit’s cackling and just grunting in response to Biribo’s assurance that artifacts were inherently sterile and couldn’t transmit disease (or foot fungus, presumably). That seemed like an interesting point worthy of more exploration, but I didn’t have the headspace at that moment. Every second I wasn’t repeatedly slamming Lady Gray into a wall with Windburst until her skull squelched like a watermelon on the beach was a second in which I could feel the rage rising higher up the back of my throat as if it wanted to choke me.

It was already fairly obvious just from the sounds we could hear, but stepping out the front door of the Jostled Jugs immediately confirmed that all hell was breaking loose out on the street.

There were sounds of fighting, shouts and screams and impacts, and little sign of the people who would normally be about Yrshith Street at night. No doubt many of them had been driven off by the last few days of thugs terrorizing the whole area, but the few customers and pedestrians who might have ventured here were probably down to the three people I saw fleeing into nearby alleys. I couldn’t exactly see who was fighting whom, thanks to the sizable knot of men and a few women with swords and clubs coming up the street at me; they filled the available space, denying me a view of what was going on behind them.

Not that there was much question.

I stepped off the Jugs’s front walkway and into the street. Smooth and unhurried, despite the seething cocktail of adrenaline and anger buzzing in all my limbs. I could ride that sensation, channel it into my performance as I’d learned to on countless stages. Aster stepped down after me, bringing her huge sword up in a broad gesture to rest its blunt edge across her shoulders. Behind us, the people I’d brought with me fanned out to cover the front of the Jugs, bouncers with clubs taking the front, ex-Alley cats aiming crossbows through the gaps between them, as Sakin had coached us.

More goons were coming from the other side—the side toward which I’d sent my “traitors.” There were fewer than from the other side, and now that I looked…yes, I picked out familiar faces among the ranks closing in. Positioned to cut down their former fellows as I’d ordered, or having brought them to kill me? The next moments would tell.

No sign of Lady Gray. She was here, though. That one wouldn’t just be watching for an opening; she would be working to make one.

Both ranks of thugs slowed as they approached, weapons upraised, but none coming within a few paces—damn it, meters—of us, not close enough for Aster’s sword to swing into them. Despite the sounds of violence from all around, a momentary stillness fell.

I looked straight across from the Jugs, where the Alley Cat, Minifrit’s proud center of the blue light district, stood open and empty. All its windows shattered and door torn off, the blue lantern reduced to shards of glass in the street. All the work she’d put in, not only surviving but finding a way to thrive in this filthy, squalid hole, smashed just to make a point.

The rage in me sang.

Several of the front ranks of thugs jumped when I burst out laughing. I spread my arms, turning in a full circle to embrace all of Cat Alley and those within.

“Figured it out, haven’t you? That’s right—somebody has to be first. Well? Let’s see the brave volunteers step forward! Who’s in a hurry to die tonight?”

They hesitated. Shuffled feet, glancing at once another with wide eyes. A few actually tried to back up into their comrades.

I sighed heavily, shaking my head in a broad pantomime of disappointment. “Really? Must I start the festivities myself?”

Then, to my right, one woman smoothly reversed the grip on the dagger she held in her left hand and plunged it backward into the throat of the man next to her. On that signal, more followed suit, swiftly cutting down their unprepared cohorts. That was the side of the street with significantly fewer people to begin with; in seconds, there were only nine of them, standing with bloodied weapons.

“Oh, Craed, you cocksucker,” spat one of the men to my left.

“Nothin’ personal, Cwyndon,” Craed said with a shrug. “Business is business.”

“Don’t speak for us,” Kadret sneered. “This is personal as hell. Ask Gray why, if any of you survive the night.”

Whether on purpose or in a panicked twitch, one of them fired a crossbow at me. The bolt went clean through my forearm; I felt my hand go slack as a tendon was severed. Rage spiked in me so brilliantly I felt sure I would combust.

I grabbed the bolt by its pointed head and ripped it the rest of the way through, then tossed it to the street.

Heal.

“You,” I said, pointing my freshly-restored hand at a weaselly-looking man now holding an unloaded crossbow. “I want you to know I respect you for that. When you get to hell, tell Virya I said so. Immolate.”

Up he went, in fire and agony, and the brawl began. It had to; their options were to attack or wait to be slaughtered, and whether or not these men knew that consciously, animal instinct took over. They were packed in too tightly to retreat. With a unified roar they charged, and made it maybe four steps closer before even the sheer weight of the bodies behind them couldn’t stand up against the onslaught of magic they plowed into.

Windburst, Slimeshot, Slimeshot, Windburst, Slimeshot, Windburst, Immolate, Sparkspray, Sparkspray, Slimeshot, Immolate, Slimeshot, Immolate, Slimeshot, Slimeshot, Immolate, Immolate.

The thugs’ charge broke five seconds after it began; they had actually lost ground, hurled backward by multiple Windbursts. More than half of them were down—dead, maimed, or burning.

I was not dealing with hardened troops, here. Those who could still stand up now bravely charged in the opposite direction.

“IS THAT ALL?” I roared, stalking toward them with my arms stretched wide. Fallen men, those not screaming as they burned alive, tried to scrabble backward from my approach. “You boys do so enjoy picking on the weak. This is your own game, played better than you’ve ever seen it! Are we not enjoying ourselves? Can’t you at least appreciate the superior technique?”

Somebody summoned up the courage or sheer panic to charge at me with an animal scream, sword upraised to swing. He died of a slime to the face at bullet speed.

Then Aster jabbed me in the back with the pommel of her greatsword.

“Stop having fun,” she growled.

I half-turned from the scene of carnage to stare incredulously at her.

Aster met my gaze, shifting her eyes only momentarily to nod at the display of destruction I’d just spread across Yrshith Street. “Those are human beings,” she said in a voice low enough not to be audible beyond the two of us. “They’ve made some shitty choices, but they chose from the same hand of shitty options as the people we came here to save. Kill who you have to, but they aren’t toys. You know who thinks all this is a game, and what she’s trying to turn you into. Are you going to make it that easy for her?”

Well, that was a bucket of ice water down the pants.

For a second there I’d felt on the verge of lashing out at her, but staring into Aster’s golden eyes, I felt the anger starting to melt from me. Part of me didn’t want to let it go, even as I recognized this was for the best. Far from raining on my parade, I recognized that Aster had thrown me a lifeline. I might well be unable to stave off the effects that life on Ephemera and the things I had to do were having on me, but I could always remember that my becoming a cackling villain was exactly what Virya wanted. For that reason alone, I would fall no farther than I had to.

I’m Omura Seiji, damn it, and what I can’t do through strength or cleverness alone, I can accomplish out of sheer fucking spite.

I breathed in and out a couple of times, then nodded once at Aster, turning back to regard the mess I’d made with fresh eyes. The street was awash in blood and slimes; no one else was offering to attack me. The men I’d Immolated were flickering out; a couple lay on the pavement in sobbing fetal balls, but the rest of the injured and traumatized were trying to retreat, some crawling on their bellies.

Looking at this now, I couldn’t find it in me to be pleased with myself. I hadn’t won this, hadn’t earned the victory. All I’d done was unleash unearned power they had no chance of matching. I might as well have mowed down these medieval peasants with an AK-47 for how honorable it was.

Funny how honor can seem like a silly, antiquated concept until you catch yourself being a despicable little shit.

“Thanks, Aster,” I said quietly. “I don’t like to think what I’d do without you.”

Coming to stand beside me, she nodded once.

“And yet,” I mused, “still don’t wanna bang you.”

I’m Omura Seiji, damn it. When I feel awkward or off-balance, I talk shit.

Her nostrils flared in a silent snort of annoyance. “I really appreciate how you keep bringing that up.”

“It’s weird if you think about it! You are objectively the whole package. I think I’ve told you this before, but you’re gonna make some poor henpecked bastard very happy someday. Or at least…resigned.”

“Remind me to ask Sakin if he wants any help for when he inevitably betrays you.”

“My current theory is he never will, just for the fun of watching me welter in the anticipation.”

Above us, on the roof of the Alley Cat, a figure in a dark coat rose up.

“There she is!” someone shouted, and multiple crossbows were discharged. On the rooftops it was darker than down here among the lamps, and the figure itself was dark gray, but even in the dimness, I recognized that coat. The dimness successfully disguised its unnatural motion until it was too late. Crossbow bolt tore around, past, and into it, and then the coat fell…

Lady Gray stood up on the lip of the roof, catching her coat as it descended from the upward trajectory on which she’d thrown it. A few crossbow bolts stuck through it at odd angles, which didn’t seem to bother her as she deftly swirled it around her shoulders, slipping her arms into the sleeves and letting it settle over her from that one dramatic swish, which was too impressive not to have been practiced. It looked like something out of an anime. Even the bolts still dangling from it looked more like trophies from fallen enemies than evidence she’d been shot at, and the difference was purely in the assertive confidence with which she held herself.

Damn, this woman understood the power of presentation. I was forced to respect that about her, which annoyed me to no end.

Presentation and tactics, I mentally amended. Now my trigger-happy followers all had unloaded crossbows, which would take an all-important few seconds to rectify. Turning the cranks on those things was easier than drawing a bowstring, but not nearly as quick.

Lady Gray raised her fingers to her lips and let out a piercing whistle which echoed over the street, then planted one boot on the lip of the roof and leaned over to smirk down at us.

“So it’s personal, is it, Kadret? I will remember that.”

At her signal, her men were regrouping. Nobody from behind Craed and Kadret’s gangs, I saw; they had clearly done their work well. But on the other side, boots pounded as men streamed forward in groups of anywhere from two to ten. Clearly most of Gray’s organization was out to play tonight, and now they came pouring in from whatever cruel mischief they’d been up to among the brothels down that way. Looking at the imbalance, I surmised my new recruits had engaged in some clever misdirection to divert everybody from their end of the street. There was no way they could’ve killed this many people alone, not without being caught and overwhelmed.

And now we were being swamped with fresh enemies.

Wait…not that fresh.

Lots of them were limping, bleeding, bruised, holding dangling arms. A couple of guys had singed clothing.

And behind them came women. Armed with weapons as makeshift as they were utterly vicious: chair legs covered in broken glass, mop handles with kitchen knives affixed to their ends to make improvised polearms, large pot lids bristling with nails. Lots of them dripping with blood. These women hadn’t just impetuously grabbed objects and started hitting back; they had prepared and planned for this.

Somehow it was made all the more dramatic by the fact that they were armored only in the traditional uniform of whores everywhere, short and strategically slitted dresses that showed off a lot of chest and leg. Many of them were also limping, bloodied, and beaten, but they came anyway, making another line behind Gray’s thugs, or so I could briefly see before the men closer at hand blocked off my view down the street with their own bodies again.

“Well, blow me down,” I muttered.

Behind me, Gannit leaned out of the broken front window of her brothel and cackled. “Oh, did you think you were the only game in town, Mister Big Scary Healer? You didn’t teach these girls to stick up for themselves, you just reminded ‘em it was on the table. Don’t nobody need your permission to knife a bastard!”

“Unbelievable,” Gray said from the roof, her tone dripping with sheer disgust. “By Sanora’s tits, why do I even pay you clods? Men, slaughter those whores!”

I inhaled deeply, raised my head, and projected from the diaphragm as powerfully as I physically could, which was a lot.

“WHORES, SLAUGHTER THOSE MEN!”

The men obeyed, charging both backward at the prostitutes and forward at Aster and myself, but they did so in grim silence. From behind them came a furious roar of female voices before the clashing of weapons resumed.

I felt that roar ignite the fury in me again, but differently this time. Just as angry, but now there was something else in it. Something strangely optimistic.

Aster stepped past me, swinging her greatsword in a broad horizontal arc that felled three men who were trying to rush us. Behind her, I knelt and picked up a curved sword of striated green akornin from beside a corpse I’d recently made. Straightening, looted blade in hand, I looked up at Lady Gray, who was still looming over the roof like a gargoyle.

Meeting my gaze, she grinned. Secure in her vantage point.

I stretched out my hand toward the pavement at my feet.

Windburst!

Immediately I realized why nobody had mentioned this possibility to me; local sorcerers doubtless had better sense than to do it.

Yes, you can fling yourself three stories straight up by directing a gale-force blast of air at the ground right under yourself, but it won’t be with anything resembling a controlled trajectory. I went tumbling ass-over-hairdo into the sky, utterly disoriented and suddenly violently dizzy. My aim had been good enough; I did appear to be arcing in the right direction, and indeed I came plummeting back down right onto the roof of the Alley Cat, getting a good look at Lady Gray’s startled expression as I descended.

This would ordinarily be the part where I smashed through the shingles in a mess of broken roofing and my own blood, but now there came the catch: all those sorcerers who had better sense than to try this would be Blessed with Magic—and therefore, by definition, not wearing Surestep Boots.

Despite the graceless tumble that had brought me there, I landed with my feet under me like a cat. My boots hit the slope of the roof, my legs flexed with perfect balance, and I turned the remaining momentum of my fall into a controlled slide. Straight down the slant of the roof until I shifted my footing at the last moment, regaining traction and coming to a stop at the very edge, right in front of Lady Gray.

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing her look shocked.

Below us, the roar of battle echoed from Yrshith Street as her forces and mine tore Cat Alley apart. I didn’t spare it a glance, raising my sword to point at her.

“Have you paid the price?”